


oh how these waters rise

by afearsomecritter (jsaer)



Series: flood lake [1]
Category: Critical Role (Web Series), UnDeadwood (Web Series)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Merpeople, Canon-Typical Violence, Gen, implied drowning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-07
Updated: 2020-06-07
Packaged: 2021-03-03 21:49:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 14,359
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24582583
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jsaer/pseuds/afearsomecritter
Summary: The massive body of water that appeared out west the same day the dead rose in Gettysburg has a lot of names. The locals just call it Flood Lake.(or, the merfolk au)
Series: flood lake [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1813411
Comments: 17
Kudos: 41





	oh how these waters rise

**Author's Note:**

> This fic can pretty much be blamed on tragicallynerdy going “hey have we done a mermaid au yet” and me going “okay but I’d wanna keep the western aesthetic.” and then this happened
> 
> (many thanks to grannyboo for beta-ing and the discord for letting me scream about this for like a month) (also a sketch of everyone’s tails can be found [on my tumblr](https://eldritchjackalope.tumblr.com/post/619489160944926720/might-delete-this-later-but-anyway-i-drew) )

\------------------

"Keep running, coward!"

A shot cracks into a tree between all the hooting and hollering and Isaac flinches, stumbles over roots and rights himself to keep running. The men aren't actually aiming for him, they just want him scared.

It's working. 

He fucking _knows_ what they'll do when they get bored of chasing him, what happened at the last town and he barely survived (his neck still aches) and he's not lucky enough for that again-

Water and mud splashes around his shins as he stumbles over an incline and starts down it. He hears laughter as the horses start to get too damn close and fucking _shit_ why is running in water so damn hard.

The chase behind him comes to a crashing halt and then the men are yelling again but they sound-

frightened. 

Isaac actually stops and turns like a God-be-damned fool, knee deep in what he's slowly realizing is lake water instead of the river he thought it was.

"Sure you want to do that, boy?" The man at the front yells. All of them have backed their horses out of the water, a good half of them eyeing it like it was liable to lunge. 

"That there is Flood Lake," the man grins at him cruelly, leaning nonchalantly on his saddle's pommel, "the Devil's own work."

The grin widens at Isaac's paling face. "Heard of it, ain't ya? Now how about you come on out and we promise to put you down real quick. It's a better deal than what's waiting for you in that water."

Isaac stares at him, the knife wound the man gave him still dripping blood from his right cheek into the uncannily still water. 

Isaac backs away, deeper into the water, watching guns raise back up. 

(he knows their faces he knows their names he served them drinks along with so many others at that little saloon he knew one had a child on the way another was planning to propose)

Another step and the ground vanishes beneath him, and the lake swallows Isaac with barely a ripple.

The men wait and wait and nothing comes up. Most of them sigh in disappointment because this is the most excitement there's been in ages, while others cast wary glances at the still lake as they leave.

(if they'd waited a bit longer they would have seen a brief thrash of clumsy new fins)

\---

Arabella watches the water as the train cuts steadily across the surface of Flood Lake, hands folded in her lap.

The lake trains are an engineering marvel of course, rails on slender paths of built up ground or strange bridges tethered to massive piers, Mr. Lockley tells her. There is something special about the wheels as well, but Arabella had stopped listening at that point, staring at the endless expanse of water glinting in the sun as the train rounds the curve.

Mr. C.W. Lockley had been sent with Arabella as an odd mix between a chaperone and a lawyer, his usual profession. Her parents likely wanted to make sure there was nothing newly untoward added to the contract they were sacrificing a second daughter to.

One of the endless rippling waves sends spray up past the window, glittering like diamonds in the bright morning night.

Her hands tighten in her lap. 

It's a beautiful place, clear water dotted by the spokes of tall trees jutting out of the water like gravesto-like spears, perhaps. 

"We should be there by the evening," Mr Lockley says, grey beard shifting as he smiled. Arabella thinks it looks rather like someone had glued a number of dust bunnies to his face. 

"Perhaps you might like to take a bit of a turn about the train?" he continues, "It may be the last chance you get to stretch your legs for a while."

This is said in the same grandfatherly jovial tone in which he'd described the trains. Arabella stares at him for a moment, a genial smile fixed on her face.

"Quite," she manages eventually, and stands abruptly, suddenly horribly aware of every flex of muscle, "If you'll excuse me."

He nods as he opens whatever ledgers he brought with him, and Arabella not quite flees to another car.

\---

Deadwood is much, much rowdier than Arabella was expecting.

They’d passed through Rapid City of course, but that place was almost exclusively massive barges huddled around the plateau the lake had not taken. 

(that was another strange thing about the lake, how some places seemed to be flooded deeper than others despite higher elevations that should have made islands but did not, and no one could explain this despite many papers claiming to the contrary)

The people there tried to avoid being in the lake itself, huddling on the surface like so much flotsam jettisoned from places like Deadwood.

It had been an angry place, she’d thought from the little she’d seen of it. 

She's seen several other towns from a distance, eerie, half sunken things that appeared void of life other than fish and foliage. 

They were not this eclectic mix of floating buildings and half sunk or fully below water buildings and moving water and so many people walking about or _swimming_ -

It’s taking Arabella everything she has not to gawk at every flash of fins as she follows Mr. Lockley across one of the many criss-crossing walkways floating between buildings. The sensation of the planks beneath her feet rocking is incredibly disconcerting, and she would feel more a fool if Mr. Lockley himself wasn't also tottering awkwardly every time someone passed by and the whole thing shifted again.

(she does nearly trip when she sees a woman in scandalously few layers simply walk off the edge of a shop’s porch and swim away a heartbeat later with a flash of iridescent red scales)

-

Cynthia's widower lives a bit outside of the main town, connected by a single floating boardwalk tied to intermittent posts leading up to the house.

It’s a decently sized house, one of the few constructed fully above water, braced between trees and massive poles. 

There’s a man standing awkwardly on the front porch as they approach. Mr Eugene Whitlock is not a large man, but isn’t unhandsome at least.

(“he’s sweet,” cynthia had written on the strange thick paper used in the lake, “a little awkward, but he’s a good man, bella, you’d like him”)

Arabella watches Eugene Whitlock pale when he sees her fully, what she realizes are a small scattering of freckle-like brown scales dark against his face. 

“Oh,” he says, “oh you look-um, hello.”

“Good afternoon, Mr Whitlock,” Arabella says, and wishes she could like him.

-

Her marriage is as simple as her signature.

(so far from childhood daydreams of pretty dresses and flowers and laughter)

Neither she or Mr Whit-Eugene are looking at each other much, flinching glances at too similar open wounds as Mr. Lockley prattles on about business. 

Eugene smells like whiskey, even from where she stands. 

"Very well then," Mr Lockley says, and Arabella abruptly realizes the ink has dried, "I will take my leave, I'm sure you two would like to get to know one another."

The last is said with the start of a hearty chuckle that peters out awkwardly under Arabella's basilisk stare. She sees Eugene flinch inwards from the corner of her eye.

"Good day, Mr. Lockely," Arabella says stiffly, Euegene echoing her, and the man lets himself out the door. 

The newlyweds stand in silence, listening to the rhythmic creaking of the pathway as the other man leaves.

-

"I'm sorry," is the second thing Eugene Whitlock ever says to her.

The third is a stumbled set of condolences, one griever to another. The fourth is an offer to make dinner, and a series of half sentence gasps at small talk.

The fifth is an offer to show her the dock.

-

For all that Flood Lake is still a _lake_ there are few true boats here, too many barely submerged trees and boulders waiting to rip apart hulls.

(too many vanished boats entirely, not even wreckage found)

The railroads, adjusted appropriately, proved far more reliable. So the dock Eugene showed her wasn't for boats at all, but rather a handrail and broad steps meant to make the transition from legs to fins and vice versa easier. 

Arabella stands and stares at it. 

"Only, only if you want," Eugene says, "Easy enough to-to get around if you don't. Cynth-"

And he stops. Arabella doesn't think she made a noise, but she coughs and says "I'll think about it."

-

(cynthia told her what her own tail had looked like of course, as best she could. she'd laughingly written that to see it properly, dear bella, you'll have to come visit and maybe you'll have one of your own-)

-

Arabella waits until early the next morning, dawn the thinnest veil over the dark sky. She'd spent the night staring at the ceiling, blessedly alone in a guest- in _her_ bedroom.

(eugene had showed it to her, eyes still down and away so he didn't see the relief blooming across her face but she thinks he heard it in her voice)

She doesn't bother to dress fully, has heard all about the weight of cloth needing to be adjusted in all of her sister's dresses, had seen the thinness of the clothes even the men wore about town. 

She treads carefully down the stairs in bare feet, dark nightgown whispering across the wood as she silently opens the door.

Then Arabella is standing by the dock, staring into the depths of the Flooded Lake. The water is incredibly clear, bases of the trees and even the lake grass visible in the weak dawn light. Steam wisps from the surface in the chilly morning air.

(it was terrifying, her sister had written in a letter arabella never showed their parents. i was drowning, and then i wasn't)

The water is cool around her ankles, around her knees, her nightgown drifting on top of the water. The planks of wood are slick under her bare feet, but she grips the handrail tightly and doesn't slip.

The lake is clear and quiet. Inviting. 

Arabella takes a deep breath and steps off the edge.

-

(her tail looks nothing like her sister's)

\---

The Reverend who held the service for her sister isn't who she was expecting.

Cynthia had mentioned in several of her letters the deeply irritating, fire and brimstone type preacher who parked his ass in the section of the church above the water to bellow imprecations about the sins of the Devil's Lake.

Arabella wasn't especially surprised by the half burnt church when she approached it, from what she could tell the man had done nothing to endear himself to the town. The building’s upper story was only half standing, the whole thing creaking ominously in every wind gust and shift of current. As she approached she could see a man in a reverend's attire inspecting the joins of the building by the door who looked nothing like Cynthia’s description of Reverend Crames.

For one he was a mer. 

His tail nearly matched his clothes, the same sort of iridescent black Arabella's seen on blackbirds when the sun hits just right, or oil.

There didn't actually appear to be scales, just the same sort of tough hide on the shark like tails she's seen. She’s read that how one's tail looks is entirely random, with grizzled miners and sweet grandmothers with tails of equally riotous colors.

(an older man nursing a whiskey in the saloon with calloused hands and a tail of bright teals and yellows disappearing under the table, a young woman with an elegantly embroidered dress and a deep brown, sharp finned tail)

The resemblance to real fish is only superficial of course, though a similarity to some known species has been noted by various studies. She doesn’t recognize whatever her own may be based on, brownish uneven rings around her body on white, and spiny fin rays unattached to the rest of her dorsal fin near the base of her spine. 

(still so strange over a week later)

The new Reverend's tail looks rather like an eel, frankly, and is almost absurdly long. He glances up when she approaches, frown from where he was examining the door hinges smoothing out. He's much younger than the described Reverend Crames as well, with soft dark eyes.

"Good morning, Miss…?"

"Arabella Livingst-Whitlock, Mrs Arabella Whitlock, nice to make your acquaintance Reverend."

He looks startled for a moment and she barrels ahead.

"Some correspondence that I received before I left Atlanta said that you were the one doing the burial-the sermon at my sister's funeral?"

The Reverend blinks at her, "I-yes, I was."

"I suppose I wanted to thank you. Whatever it was that brought you here," and she can't help her glance toward the wreckage above them, the Reverend following her gaze, "it gave my sister an opportunity to be-to have a proper funeral with someone she hadn't regularly described in….unflattering terms."

"Ah," the Reverend says, "I'm sorry for your loss. I'd only been in town a short while when she passed. It was a lovely service."

The last is said gently like it should be a balm.

(arabella hasn't gone to the grave yet, hasn't been able to make everything that much more real. and besides, with any luck this would be-)

"Quite a few folks showed up, and with the frequency of those services," and the Reverend's voice turns wry, "I can tell you that was a rare sight. She must've been a wonderful person."

Arabella tries to smile and can tell by the concern creasing around his eyes she doesn't quite succeed.

"She ha- did have a way with people. Thank you," she says, and before she can think better of it, "Only a small amount of time here in Deadwood, or here in the Lake?"

"Oh, uh, Deadwood," he replies, and this time she catches a glimpse of another eyelid in his startled blink. "I came by way of Rapid City, but I've been in the Lake for a while before that. Oh, my apologies, I just realized, I'm Reverend Matthew Mason."

When the Reverend offers his hand for a shake it is tipped with dark claws, and the gentle smile he offers has teeth that are just a mite too sharp.

(arabella's reard that the longer you've been a mer, the less human your upper half looks)

"Pleased to meet you," she says and finds herself meaning it. And then, because he seems fun to fluster, she gestures again to the church.

"I quite like the new look," she says, "gives it character."

"Um," he says.

"Have a good day, Reverend Mason." 

As she swims away she hears a bewildered goodbye trail behind her.

\---

Arabella is-shocked may be too mild a word, when the completion of a minor protection spell she's setting on the house is accompanied not only by the usual sensation of something clicking into place but also a shower of sparks that nearly sends her yelping off the edge of the porch.

She freezes utterly instead, watching the sparks weave around her hands, bright ambers and greens, before fading in the bright morning light.

She sits there, new thin skirts barely offering protection from the wood digging into her knees, for several long moments before the sound of movement inside jolts her out of it and she heads inside for breakfast.

(magic works differently here, bells, cynthia wrote, everything is stronger but -and there are several scribbled out words- it's silly but i keep thinking something is watching me when i cast)

\---

One of the more notable aspects of Flood Lake was how relatively benign it was. This seems an absurd thing to say about a lake that submerged most of several states, but.

The dead rose in Gettysburg and bid the living to join them with guns and grasping hands, nightmares shambled out of the dark to swallow forts whole, demons and other older things shredded rents in reality-

What is a simple lake that only changes your form, to that?

\---

(the landismans, she says proudly, purveyors of fine goods needed)

For all that it's called Flood Lake, it just sort of….appeared, one morning. There was no great wave nor rising water. 

You were standing, and then you weren't.

Miriam had been one of those folks, skirt tangling around her new fins.

(later she'll think they're quite pretty, deep rich purples and blacks and reds and voluminous fins like fine fabric. later.)

Those first few days and weeks were a time Miriam doesn't especially like to think about.

Eventually life went on, especially as folks discovered you could still leave the lake even if it left its mark on you. 

People still needed goods of all kinds, especially the more difficult to acquire sort. The Landismans were still purveyors and acquirers and they were both quite talented at the logistics of obtaining and devising the use of many of their previous products in this exciting new world.

Life was good to them for a long while. Her dear Harrison would laugh and sing sea shanties to her, horribly off key as they spun around in faithful mimicry of land bound dances.

He would call her the most beautiful mermaid in the world, and feign heart clutching shock when she'd claim to be no maid through barely stifled giggles.

Even as the years wore on and the water wore away at their human features her husband delighted in her smile and how she still talked with sharp tipped hands. He'd shown his own too jagged teeth in a smile when he told her she was as charming as ever, and that her dangerous smiles were just a mite more literal now. She herself thought the arching patterns of scales were quite distinguished on him, and liked to tease him about it because his blush set off the pale scales nicely.

She burned her heart with that shack. they'd thought maybe the air would do him some good but-

(miriam landisman, she says in an office in Deadwood, purveyor of goods needed)

\---

Aloysius Fogg makes a name (his own) for himself by being a tracker.

He does well enough in the woods, but what he’s real good at is talking to people. Just ask certain folks the right questions, at the right time, provide a listening ear, and you can learn all you need to know. He’s not so great at chases anymore, at least on foot. But that doesn’t matter if they don’t see you coming. 

He ends up in the Lake almost incidentally, tracking some murderers from Omaha as they fled into the network of islands and floating cities. There’s a confrontation on a train that’s a bit more exciting than he usually likes, and they all end up in the water.

Aloysius turns in those bounties while he has a sleek shark’s tail, big ropey scar down the side. He tracks more bounties into the Lake after that, though he tries to stay out of the water. 

(someone asks him if his name is cause he could track a fella even in a heavy fog. aloysius just laughs)

\---

Clayton Sharpe goes into the Lake cause he's running out of places to hide. He's been skipping around the edges for years, watching the waves lap at the shores and shying away like a goddamn spooked horse.

He knows he's been a bit of a coward in this. Plenty of folks live in and around the lake and are just fine (with scales and claws and strange eyes). He's just-

(they'd _drowned him_ , some jackass just drunk enough yokels who'd broken into his shack of a hotel room when he was too green to think of sleeping with a pistol under his pillow or barricading the door. they'd beaten him dragged him to the lake and held his head under and laughed and laughed cause it takes more than a dunking to be able to breathe or so they thought-)

He just ain't too fond of water is all, born and bred in dry Texan hills with scorpions and rattlers. That much water all in one place looked downright unnatural, you can’t even see the other shore cause it’s several hundred fuckin’ miles away.

(-he decides to play dead mid thrash and lets his struggles go weak and still and not goddamn think about how the water stopped burning his lungs a few minutes ago. they leave him on the bank and he sleeps with a gun and barricaded door after)

He just ain't fond of water, but he's running out of places to go, and folks are hiring guns for the Lake trains. 

But it's good money, so he goes.

(he breathes and feels the lake in his lungs)

\---

Isaac hangs in the water, a mere dozen feet below the surface, and breathes.

The water had all but pulled him below, when he'd stumbled backward off of what he can now see was once a cliff before the water came.

He should be dead twice over, then. Either by the men who thought a young deserter made for good sport or by the void below him.

Instead he is saved by the lake from both.

(he'd learned to swim as a child, in the small farm pond heavy with algae and weeds, mud caked up to his shins as he shrieked with his siblings)

A long, dark tail gleams in the dappled sunlight, only the random twitches of muscle matching when he keeps trying to kick his legs connecting the impossibility to him. 

(isaac is breathing under the lake)

Below him the lake is achingly clear, a dizzying depth falling away beneath him visible down to the leaves of the somehow living trees nearly a hundred feet below. The afternoon light lines the branches with cool gold, and Isaac stares at them instead of what the lake has made of him.

(his lungs are full of liquid, and he does not drown)

Eventually, clumsily, he begins to swim.

Later he will find a town, full of folks like himself. He will find that God made humans stubborn, adventurous creatures, and that not everyone in the lake came from fleeing somewhere else. 

(he will introduce himself as matthew)

\---

The half burned church shifts in the wind above the water, creaking like a ship’s hull. The Reverend is speaking in front of it, tail curled neatly below him as he addresses the small crowd. The novelty of a mer priest after Crames hadn’t quite worn off for everyone, and he catches a few familiar faces in the crowd as he speaks.

“-rebuild this church of Deadwood. Thank you.”

\---

“Mister Swearengen would like to see you now.”

\---

Matthew joins the little group Dan waves him to, nodding awkwardly to Miss Arabella and the new faces. The fellow with the hat and spotted shark tail looked vaguely familiar in the way of seeing someone about town. But the other man, also a shark tail but with dark tipped fins he notes with bemusement, is completely unfamiliar. As is the other woman.

There's a moment of shared awkwardness as everyone realizes that Mr Swearengen's office is on the dry second floor of the saloon. 

"Well then," the woman in purple says, "See you in a moment." 

And then she's gone in a graceful swirl of fins, rich purples and blacks nearly indistinguishable from her skirts as she heads for one of the ramp stairs, buttoned up section of her skirt rolling down as she goes. Matthew blinks after her and follows, heading to one of the other partitions so he could shove pants on under the (when he has legs) knee length cassock he wears. He doesn't bother with shoes these days, just keeps the pants in the mostly waterproof satchel he's had for years.

It always feels strange to stand on two legs, he spends more time with a tail now than without. Matthew catches the woman in purple's concerned glance when he stumbles a bit and he waves her off. 

"I'm quite alright, it's just been a while."

She smiles at him, a flash of mischief with her sharp teeth as she replies, "I'm quite familiar with that feeling dear, I do think we're the only two who didn't bother with shoes."

"What's wrong with shoes?" Miss Arabella says from behind him, and Matthew nearly startles a foot in the air. 

"Nothing at all," the other woman says, and Matthew really must get her name, "they're just a fair amount of weight and space to take around with you if you don't plan to use them much."

“This is riveting conversation, but how about we head in?" The man who’d had the dark tipped shark tail cut in, eyebrow raised.

The other man just waits behind him, expression flat under the shadow of his hat.

"Right," Matthew says.

\---

Mister Swearengen is quite the character.

Miriam isn’t especially, ah, enthused about the prospect of being seen through so easily, hidden hip holster and all. But it’s an interesting job offer from an interesting man.

Mister Swearengen perches in his office above the lake like a lord over all he surveys, interior balcony overlooking the main room and the staircases leading up to the various rooms and walkway ringing the walls and leading to the various rooms. 

She doesn’t think he’s afraid of the Lake like most who settle themselves in the dry, the myriad scales along his temple and very sharp teeth belie that. 

He’s an interesting man, and she doesn’t think she particularly likes him, but the gold is welcome enough.

As are her potential new acquaintances.

\---

The oil treated leather jacket Mister Sharpe tosses at Matthew amidst handing out weapons is a surprise. A surprise and a startlingly sweet one from an admitted gun for hire, well worn holsters settled comfortably around his hips and fore-fins.

He’ll have to keep an eye on this Mister Clayton “the Coffin” Sharpe. 

The weight of a shotgun is nostalgic in its familiarity, and he acts the rube and glances down the empty barrel of an uncocked gun to try and dispel it.

(the resulting yelping is pretty funny)

\---

There is an impossibility at the miners camp, surrounded by corpses.

The bodies aren’t old enough to have sunk yet, so they hang in the cloudy water, drifting limply with the current generated by the thin plumes of smoke roiling from the pit behind them. 

The not-smoke is black as pitch, lit dull orange as something burns below. 

It looks, Matthew thinks a tad hysterically, rather like an entrance to hell.

He really, really does not want to get much closer, but he is one of the few who can see well enough at night, and needn't make himself a target with the lanterns.

Matthew absently cocks his shotgun, playing along with Mrs Landisman’s worry. 

There’s over a half dozen corpses strewn among the mining equipment. He sees Miss Arabella swoop down to grab something that had fallen near one of the dead and begin to head closer to the pit to look over it as Mister Sharpe checks over another body.

The bodies are hanging at strange angles, and everything smells of burning, the taste cloying on his tongue. The trails of blood not yet fully dispersed hang like ungodly wreaths around their heads.

Matthew has only just begun to follow Miss Arabella when she bolts back, sharp fins along her back flared in alarm. 

She stutters about snakes and hell and Mister Sharpe looks up from his examination of the corpse. 

“Whatever killed him looks to have been relatively recent,” he says, “probably within the last few hours.” He grimaces and shakes his hand as he withdraws it from where he’d propped open the corpse’s jaw. “Reverend, by whatever holiness holds you, something mighty foul has taken the inside of this poor fucker's mouth.”

Matthew hums in reply, glancing at the other corpses and then again at the pit.

The heat of the pit is awful as Matthew approaches it, shotgun at the ready as Mister Sharpe and himself look over the edge. There are more of the dead in the pit, that same terrible unsinking stillness.

And snakes.

Thousands and thousands of snakes.

Matthew recoils reflexively from the edge, shotgun yanking up to fire before the lack of movement registers and he looks back in.

All of the snakes appear to be dead, thank God.

The water feels strange here, beyond the heat. Heavy and hard to breathe. Mister Sharpe doesn’t appear to notice, tail flicking carefully as he actually swims down into the edge of the pit, heedless of Matthew’s startled reach for him. He was going for one of the snake corpses, Matthew realizes, watching as he grabs one with a gloved hand. 

The dead-the human dead in the pit are burned, Matthew notes, feeling the hair on the back of his neck stand on end. He’d been unfortunate enough to have seen a steam burn before, knew what that kind of damage looked like.

This was not it. 

"Mister Sharpe," Matthew calls, "You may want to hurry-"

Something shifts in the pit below.

Matthew is never going to admit to the shrill yelp he makes even as he lunges forward to drag a startled Clayton back the last few feet out of the pit and away. 

(people always seem to forget how long his tail is, how strong he is and usually he's happy to let them forget-)

Unfortunately in his surprise Clayton drops the snake thing. Matthew has a moment to see the strange, banded markings on the body and the tentacled face before the silt under the thing starts to dissolve. 

Matthew starts yelling for help even as he lets Clayton go to hold his shotgun properly, trying to keep a wary eye on the dissolving snake and the pit behind it-

The smoke thickens for a split second and then two _live_ snake abominations come boiling out of the sand where their deceased fellow had lain and even more are coming out of the goddamn pit.

Fuckin _shit_

And then one of them is _around his damn tail_ and yanking him down into the ground hard enough that the wind is nearly knocked out of him. It releases him once he hits the ground, and he can hear the others yelling. 

He catches the flash of Miriam’s magnesium lantern and several snakes recoiling from the light and then Mister Fogg is dragging him up and backwards and Matthew manages to get a shot off as one comes just a bit too fuckin close and he sees it recoil, still alive and trailing blood as black as the smoke behind it. Two flat cracks sound behind them and one of the snakes goes limp as one of Clayton’s shots rips through its skull. 

(he thinks he hears a shriek)

The other snakes recoil from the death and the eye searing light from the lantern and coil protectively over their wounded one and then they vanish back into the soil.

The clearing is quiet for several long beats. The human corpses still hang motionless in the water, the ground undisturbed like it had never birthed snake abominations.

They all hover in place, glancing at each other.

“What in the hell-” Miriam starts.

Matthew blinks hard, trying to chase the black spots out of his vision. The spots grow instead, and he can’t breathe and the world is starting to spin and he sees Clayton slump and then-

-

It is dark, and there is nothing there.

(he’s curled up on the spine of a mountain)

It is void.

Except.

There is something there.

(the spine beneath him flexes)

It’s long, narrow and massive. He cannot see it, but he knows It is there.

(it is looking at him and he knows It)

And It speaks.

“This place is poisoned by the stench of greed. It’s in the air, it’s in the dirt. It’s in the water and the fire. Give unto me your souls and I will grant you power.”

(and it speaks)

“The Dealer will see you now.”

( _hello, my own._ )

A flicker of cards-a Jack of Spades?

“You decide the fate of this place.”

It is speaking to more than him and the world bleeds away darkness and there is a stampede of horses. The men astride them bleed in the saddle (he is one of them) and the moon is high and the towns are empty dead air dead w a t e r-

And he sees a chapel.

( _are you ready now?_ )

\---

Clayton wakes up to the moon filtering through the water.

“What the _fuck_ ,” he rasps, and nearly sends himself straight back into the ground when he flexes like a man trying to stand up instead of a mer. He catches a glimpse of Mrs Whitlock staring at the pistol by her fins, a pistol he could’ve fuckin sworn he saw get flung into the pit.

Light blooms as Mrs Landisman relights the magnesium lantern, casting it about warily. The light reflects in her eyes, turning them into bright yellow disks. Clayton damn well knows that those long in the Lake can see in the dark better but it’s mighty unnerving to see up close.

“Everyone alright?” Mrs Whitlock calls, leveraging herself up. A chorus of affirmatives responded, everyone managing to get themselves upright.

“Define ‘all right’” Mrs Miriam says, straightening her skirt over her tail. She seems uninjured, as do the others other than the Reverend, who’d taken a nasty hit from the landslide earlier. 

“That’s a real good question, I have no idea what the hell just happened,” Mister Fogg replies. 

“H-how long has it been?” the Reverend asks with a wary glance skyward. The lantern light catches his eyes too, glinting an eerie red Clayton recalls from his short lived acquaintance with swamps. 

Clayton hears Whitlock saying something about midnight and the equinox as he reloads his guns, nearly slamming the bullets into place. He sees her pull something out of her bag and start sketching something on the ground. 

“What the hell is that?”

“Just some protection,” Whitlock says airily, “don’t get me wrong, Reverend, while I’m sure we have the good Lord’s favor we can use all the help we can get.” She lifts the stick, finishing the symbol.

Clayton blinks hard, trying to get rid of the remaining sparks in his vision. 

“Of course,” the Reverend replies, glancing at the marking on the ground with a strange expression, “the Lord is our shepherd but- I have _never_ seen anything like those-those snakes. What were they?”

“I don’t know but was any of that even real? My pistol, it got dragged into the pit but now it’s here,” Whitlock says, then seems to brace herself. “I had a vision-I think we all had the same vision. There was a dealer.”

Clayton twitches and finishes reloading his pistols, trying not to think of the rows upon rows of needle teeth said Dealer had displayed even as the others murmur their assent. 

(it must not have shown them all of each others visions of they would all be looking at him like-)

He swims over to the pit as the rest talk, tail all but lashing behind him and lo and behold all the goddamn fucking dead snakes are still piled in there.

“Well,” he calls over his shoulder, “whatever it was wasn't just a vision, these things are still there. So take solace in the knowledge that that _fuckery's_ still around.”

Then Whitlock raises the question of what in the hell they’re gonna tell Swearengen.

\---

Things Clayton had not previously put thought to: how easy it was to remove the head of a dead man. For a fresh corpse the answer seems to be about the expected amount, and he tries not to think about what this might’ve been like had Swearengen waited another day or more.

He’s mistaken in thinking this whole evening will be the strangest part of his night, he finds when they crest the hill to town and they hear fuckin gunshots-

( _you have power now_ )

and their veins light up blue.

\---

There are dead men _standing_ in the street.

Matthew almost gets fuckin shot when he freezes in shock, a bullet cracking into the wall next to his head the only thing that gets him moving again. 

He knows they’re dead long before the rotting flesh is visible, knows it as a void in the previously unnoticed pulse of life in every other being around him, knows it in the way they stand on two legs, unbreathing, in the silt of the street. 

Then one takes two bullets to the chest and keeps fuckin walking and Matthew swings his shotgun up, aims and fires. 

Arabella flinging magic isn't as shocking as she would probably prefer to be to a man of the cloth, Aloysius throwing fuckin lightning however, _is_.

The utter wrongness of their foes keeps his skin crawling the entire battle, only worsening at the sight of the unnatural cloud of not-fog that roils just outside of the light.

Bullets aren't working fast enough, one escapes, hooded form fleeing before the combination of firepower and light. Matthew thinks of the power his companions had shown and he glances down at his crucifix and prays.

(please please please as the cards are drawn a prayer for luck for chance a prayer to-)

Then he leans out from behind cover and the world lights up.

The dead men die again one by one, by bullet or by power and slowly the crawling sensation bleeds away as their unlife does. 

( _very good, my own_ )

The last dies from a bullet through the eye socket, courtesy of Arabella. 

They all stare at each other, after, shocky and bewildered. Matthew finds himself murmuring prayers, tail coiled neatly below him, the litany punctuated by Clayton cussing as he reloads his revolvers. 

There are unlucky dead floating near the Gem Saloon and in several other places along the street, blood streaking the water in not yet dispersed plumes. The twice dead men didn’t bleed apart from the scattering of bone and rotting slime exploding from their injuries. There’s still a vague cloud of viscera hanging over the more…aggressively re-slain ones. Matthew feels a little ill. 

The Sheriff stalks over, expression thunderous and lashing tail sending up silt. 

“Do you know what those were?”

“Haven’t a fucking clue,” Clayton replies from where he’s holstering his guns and Matthew’s prayers stutter to a halt.

"They were goddamn horse thieves, shot a couple people outside of the Gem Saloon. Two days ago we hung them and they'd yet to be buried. Tonight they came out in the thoroughfare and started shooting at everyone-”

“Where were the bodies being held?” Matthew interrupts. 

“In the back alleys,” Sheriff Bullock replies, full force of his frown now directed at Matthew. The frown intensifies when he catches sight of the shotgun slung across his back. 

“Are there any more? Any more bodies, I mean,” Miriam thankfully interjects, distracting him. 

“No, no these were the only men we've hung recently.”

\---

Clayton, only half listening to the conversation with the Sheriff, is eyeing the dissolving fog that had halted at the edges of the light. He hears something about the fourth fucker who ran not having been one of the horse thieves and then he hears Whitlock say:

“How deep do you bury your dead? I have a feeling shallow graves aren’t going to cut it.”

“The usual six feet with stones above,” the Reverend replies. 

“Has anyone checked the cemetery?” There’s something odd in the way she says it-oh right.

“I wonder how your sister’s doing,” Clayton says, and weathers the basilisk stare she levels at him before the Sheriff offers himself up via commenting on the aforementioned dead sister.

He tunes out the introductions that follow, uneasy about being known by face and name, false though it may be, by the local law man.

(the whispers of thanks from the crowd grate like the rough of his own hide on raw skin and he snarls and wants to flee because he is seen he is recognized he is known none of these things are what he wants)

It is nice enough though, that the Sheriff sets them up in his own hotel.

\---

Later Arabella sits on the dock, legs crossed all unladylike as she stares at the water. She can hear Eugene moving around the house but she stays where she is.

( _i keep thinking something is watching me_ her sister said)

The tear catcher is cool and heavy in her hand.

\---

Miriam undresses and partially redresses, pacing around the room. There’s a box next to her bed and she keeps an eye on it.

The dead men in the street, the dead men at the mine, _burned_ like-

The dead men in the street, the dead men at the mine, the strange creature that spoke to them, the dreams. She sits and stares at the box by her bed.

(eventually she sleeps, and she dreams)

\---

Aloysius Fogg doesn't sleep.

Deadwood is a loud town, even this late. Shouts echo across the water, no earth or trees to soften the sound. The bed stays neatly made, ignorant of his presence as he settles in a chair by the window, staring at the far away sky. His pistol is cool in his hand, a calming, familiar weight.

He sits in the chair and does not sleep.

(he watches the stars and thinks of lightning instead)

\---

Clayton sits on the bed, absently cleaning his pistols. His boots are by the foot of his bed, a strange indulgence in a stranger town. If he needed to egress at speed he could just go through the window into the water, where boots would be useless.

His hands are bare, short claws dark in the lantern light. He thinks if he left his gloves off tomorrow it would go unremarked, between the dark hooks adorning the Reverend’s fingers and the brightly painted ones on Miss Miriam’s. 

He cleans the guns, and watches his door.

\---

In the hotel room the Reverend kneels on still wobbly legs, wood rough and strange against his skin even through fabric. The beads of his rosary clink gently against the claws even the dry won’t steal now. The metal and wood is warm in his hands.

“I’m ready, Lord.”

\---

Matthew meets his God for the first time in a sunken church, built long before the water came.

It's abandoned like the rest of the town, but in good shape. The tiny rose window with actual stained glass someone had gone through all the trouble of shipping all the way out here had been left intact, the weak sun that makes it this deep sending red and yellow patches of shifting light to mix with the blues already dancing on the far wall.

It makes a fine shelter for the night, and while he could have easily slept in one of the many houses the sight of the one he'd broken into had proved altogether too unnerving. 

Plates and laundry and furniture, all the debris of daily life, sitting there as though their owners had evaporated mid breath when the flood came. Or maybe even before. Matthew is still fairly new to this strange underwater life, and while he’s seen abandoned towns of all kinds above and below there was something odd-

Then he had caught sight of a cloth doll laying on the ground partway to a kitchen table as though it had simply been dropped there.

Skin crawling, Matthew had retreated to the church, deciding that the pews would fit his tail better anyway. 

The church is far more peaceful, despite the absolute emptiness of the place. 

Matthew absently gnaws on some jerky he'd bought a town or so back, eyeing the altar and trying to decide if trying to find the donations box or any other valuables that might have been left behind might be worth it before the sun goes down and it’s too dark to see. 

He meanders over to the altar, noting the fairly clean cloth before the open Bible registers.

Matthew stills, staring. 

One of the very first things people had begun doing after the flood was discover ways to treat paper so it would survive the lake. 

The Bible laying on the altar had not been treated. The pages looked like they were staying together by the prayers it held, and the currents caused by him coming closer had made the ink bled pages flutter slightly. 

The heavy print is just legible in several places, and Matthew can make out "Job 4" at the top of one page. 

The hair on the back of his neck stands on end, and Matthew backs carefully away.

Glancing at the slow, rippling dance of the light on the wall as it starts to dim he decides to wait until morning to explore properly. It gets dark so early, down in the mountain valleys.

(down in the depths)

He wastes some time pushing one of the heavy pews in front of the doors just as a precaution. There's just some strange animals in the lake, is all.

He falls asleep on a pew, listening to the slow creak of settling foundation around him as the subtle currents of the lake push gently against the church.

He wakes up somewhere else.

-

Matthew is drifting on a mountaintop, tail ticking back and forth as the current-as the air?- brushes the grass beneath him.

The sky blooms above him,endless and curving, the darkness wreathed in stars. 

He looks down from the sky, and the mountain is a slender spine before him, tall grass rippling in the wind-in the current. There is no moon in the star studded sky but the path is bright before him. He steps forward he swims forward and the path rises to meet him. 

The world disappears behind him, but he doesn’t mind. The path is steady beneath him, and there is something waiting ahead.

(the sides of the path drop endlessly into still black water, echoes of the stars caught on the surface)

Flowers bloom on the mountain, flickering open and shut as he passes like a greeting (like breathing like a pulse), petals pale against the grass.

(he’s not sure what color they are, he’s not sure if they are a color)

The path doesn’t end, exactly, but there’s something in the way, draped across the handspan of a spine of the mountain. 

The thing across shifts, and something rises above it.

It is long, narrow, and massive.

Matthew stares up at it, unafraid. The path the s p i n e below him shifts and the world around him bends with infinite care and It is looking at him.

And It speaks.

 _Not yet, my own, not yet_.

(and he wakes up)

\---

The conversation the following morning with Swearengen is- interesting. Ponderings about the new strangeness around these parts and someone buying up land where there’s no gold, figuring out who they may need to speak to, all sorts of mysteries. And he’s secured funding for rebuilding the church, should he keep doing work for the man. Matthew’s done stupider things in the name of pay and he’s quite curious about this job.

On the way to the Doc’s office Arabella sidles up to him, spikes on her back flicking nervously in a tell she hasn’t either noticed or figured out how to control yet. 

“If anyone asks, Reverend, I’m doing volunteer work for the church.”

“Oh! How wonderful!” he replies before his morning addled mind catches up, even as Arabella continues.

“If anyone asks-”

“Ah, a _ruse_. I understand,” he says, and can see her spines settle. 

Matthew really ought to see if he can get Miriam to have a discussion with her about mer body language and how to control it. Arabella’s really quite new to this and he keeps forgetting, and he doesn’t especially want her wondering why the naive, somewhat bumbling priest knows so much about falsifying body language. 

“Reverend you’re getting better at this every day,” Aloysius chimes in, smile crinkling the skin around the corners of his eyes. 

“Thank you, Mr. Fogg,” he replies, and smiles back.

\---

The Doc’s office is entirely above water, dried out herbs dangling from the ceiling and odd bottles stacked high on shelves and the sharp smell of antiseptic mingling with the stench of whiskey.

The Doc himself is clearly hungover all to hell, cussing about a missing hat as he waved them inside. Matthew nearly stumbles over a small rise in the floor, feeling a bit unsteady still. He’s not been in the dry this often for a long while. He absently notes that the Doc doesn’t have any scales as he passes the man, which is a bit odd for a long time resident. He doesn’t think much of it though, there were plenty in Rapid City who simply never got in the water. 

For a fella who professes to not liking speaking so much Clayton sure likes to set the stage, the severed head certainly hadn’t gotten any prettier overnight. 

The transition from wet to dry had certainly not done it any favors, though luckily Clayton deciding to take the labyrinthine walkways to the Doc’s office rather than swim as their attempt to not appear working together saved the head from another dunking. 

The confirmation about the men at Gettysburg and the Doc’s implication that there may be more of these things would’ve been worth interrupting the man’s day drinking alone, but they had come here for a reason. 

"If someone's fucking with the dead, they're probably doing it at the graveyard,” the Doc says and tilts his head toward Arabella. "You been to see your sister yet?"

\---

The swim to the graveyard is just long enough to make the silence awkward, and Matthew finds himself pacing Arabella as he thinks of what’s waiting for her at their destination.

“Would you mind if I asked, Miss Whitlock,” he starts and she glances warily at him, “when was the last time you spoke with your sister before she passed?”

The conversation goes well enough for a few moments, achy and bitter though Arabella justifiably is about her situation and still deep in grief over the loss of her sister. And then-

“If it means being married to some wealthy aristocrat to get what I need, to do the research to bring her back, I'll take advantage of any situation like that.”

Matthew falters.

“I’m sorry, ‘bring her back’?”

“Well, you heard the doctor. The stories of the men in the war that came back to life. Brothers seeking out other brothers,” she says and there’s something almost manic in her eyes.

“I did,” Matthew says slowly.

“Those stories were always brushed off to the insanities of the war and madness brought by the tragedies that these soldiers laid eyes upon. But what if they were real? We live in a lake where people turn into creatures out of fairy tales and you yourself threw lightning from your own hands last night. Why not this? Why not my sister?”

Matthew stops and she does too, whirling to face him with fists clenched and fins flared stiff.

“Mrs. Whitlock-Arabella, you saw what those men looked like last night. The rot, the-the decay. They were so wrong the Lake itself did not change them. Do you really want your sister back like that?”

“Of course not,” Arabella snaps, “It's the ultimate question though, isn't it? The universe and nature, and God apparently, demands balance. Good versus evil. Maybe that's the horrific side of this type of magic, maybe that's what's required of this means of bending fate. There has to be a better side.”

“How are you so sure this is the right side anyway, or that one exists?” Clayton says suddenly, and Matthew looks around to see that everyone has stopped. He’s frowning at the both of them, the slow sway of his tail to keep him in place looking more like the twitch of an irritated cat’s tail than anything else. 

“Ya’ll both seem so eager to jump into bed with whatever fate seems to have dealt us as of late. How are you so sure the side you're picking's the right one?”

“I don’t,” Matthew replies reflexively, “I have faith. I have no assurances, only what I know to be true.”

“Was it God that came to you and gave you that bolt of divine, smiting energy?” Clayton drawls, lip curling.

“Of course,” Matthew says, thinking of old dreams and a familiar voice, “what else could It have been?”

\---

How the dead were taken care of had not previously been a concern of Clayton’s. Sure he’d made enough corpses to earn “Coffin” as a moniker, but he didn’t exactly fuckin’ stick around after.

Approaching the slopes that make up the cemetery and seeing the rows of gravemarkers he has the sudden sinking feeling he’s about to find out in detail.

The Reverend leads them easily over toward the rows, skimming over the tops of the markers. He’s a mite unnerving to watch swim, honestly, resembling more the winding motion of the rattlers of Clayton’s youth than the simpler back and forth motions of most other tails he’s seen. 

Once, years ago before he’d started taking jobs in the Lake, he’d been between jobs and in a fit of boredom and rare curiosity availed himself to some books. One had been a scientific like book on the tails of the then new merfolk, an attempt to categorize the many types that had appeared. 

He himself and Aloysius had forms much like sharks, though Aloysius has two sets of the pekto-pec-the fins ‘round the hips as opposed to the normal single set. Miriam and Arabella had fairly normal, if striking, fish like forms. He didn’t recall seeing anything about eels, but that don’t mean much.

As they get closer Clayton realizes that the cloudy water around the base of the graves isn’t disturbed silt from currents.

It’s fog. 

A deeply deeply fuckin’ creepy fog it turns out, swirling is slow circles and unreacting to any of them. Clayton thinks uneasily of toxic gas clouds he’s heard of, somehow heavier than water, but they’re all so far unharmed by it.

And then Arabella sees her sister’s grave and Clayton hears the Reverend yell and everything goes to shit.

\---

The fog parts beneath Matthew, swirling with the slow winding beats of his tail as he approaches the grave.

 _James Butler ‘Wild Bill’ Hickok_ , Matthew reads, and the world falls out underneath him.

He slams into dirt and wood, gasping-gasping in _air_.

His tail-his tail in the air in the dry what the fuck why-slams into the walls of the-of the _empty grave_ the open coffin and there is ash coating his hands as he claws his way into something like a sitting position, yelling all the while. 

“Reverend?!” 

He hears Miriam yell and he manages a reply- “I’m-I’m down here!”

“Keep talkin’, keep talkin!” He hears Aloysius calls.

“I’m-I’m in a a hole, there’s, there’s a coffin-oh fuck it’s a coffin, and there’s-there’s air down here!”

His hand hits something soft and he looks down to see a hat. A hat and it’s-it’s the wrong hat, he knows what Wild Bill’s hat looked like and that ain’t it-

“There-there’s a hat?” he shouts up and he can see the deeply unsettling sight of water hanging in the air above him. And then he looks back down and catches sight of the lid of the co-coffin. There’s scratches inside. 

Matthew feels the hair on the back of his neck stand on end and the spines in his fins at the base of his back flare and dig into the dirt walls as he presses against it. 

“Give me your goddamn hand and get out!” Clayton calls, and Matthew sees him reach into the strange air pocket and flinch back out for a moment before he sticks his entire arm in.

“There’s a hat!” Matthew repeats, too confused and frightened to think of anything else and it’s getting strangely hard to breathe in the dry air and then Aloysius is shoving an arm in as well and Miriam is barking at him to grab their hands and after some extremely awkward scrambling and how the hell do snakes do this he’s out of the grave, gasping in the clean water. 

He’s still clutching the hat and hanging in the water, panting as he tries to explain the _air_ the hat the empty _fucking_ coffin with claw marks and the ash-

“Ashes?” Arabella repeats, like that was the strangest part.

“Yes, like, like the body had burned but there’s air in there and I didn’t change,” Matthew says, and he sees Clayton eyeing the grave warily.

“Well, I’m glad you’re alright,” Arabella says, and Matthew belatedly registers the state of her gloves even as she spins in a flash of striped fins and apparently continues digging up what he realizes is her sister’s grave.

Miriam’s exclamation neatly covers Matthew’s “What the _fuck._ ”

They manage to pull Arabella away and calm her down, eventually. 

The ensuing conversation isn’t especially calming.

\---

The fog spins in strange, unrelenting circles, unhindered by current or movement and Aloysius knows this fog, took his name from this fog, as impossible as it is to see below water.

It protected him once, as it does now, calling attention to the emptiness below headstones.

\---

Matthew glances down at the fog and on impulse sweeps his tail through in an arc.

The fog parts around him.

"Um," he says, and wishes he'd waited until no one was looking. 

“I'm sorry to be this curious, or this forward,” Miriam starts, staring at the fog, “but is there anything about you that we don't know? Perhaps, something that you haven't necessarily shared with the general public. There seems to be something different about you, different than all the rest of us unfortunates.”

Still staring down at the swirling mist and resisting the urge to swim up and away from it he replies “Uh, I'm seeing that as well. No, not that I'm particularly aware of that would apply to this scenario.” 

(he certainly does not think of the ridge of a mountain spine and a voice they’d all heard so recently)

Back of his neck prickling he lashes his tail one last time and watches the fog recoil before he swims up and away. “ Ideas?” he asks.

-

The void of fog over her sister’s grave feels like an accusation.

(i wanted them to wait i wanted to set her to rest myself she died so far from home her death was just inked words on a page and now the dead walk the dead kill and her sister may be unprotected-)

“Do you still want to see?”

“I-I think I have to.”

-

Arabella digs and digs, barely cognizant of the hands helping hers. She has to get to her sister, has to know, has to know why the fog recoils from her sister’s grave, why the fog that helped Aloysius may not have helped her sister, why there was an empty grave so close-

And her hands 

hit

dry

dirt.

\---

It’s eerie as shit watching the dirt scooped from the grave bone dry and set drifting in the water. Clayton keeps his pistol steady even as the shattered, completely empty coffin is uncovered.

Well _fuck_.

\---

And then they get back to town and goddamn Farnum’s dead.

Which just figured, quite frankly. 

There's all kinds of interestin' papers in his office, land deeds and lists and a stack of wanted posters Clayton slides into his jacket pocket before anyone else can get a look at them.

Just cause warrants ain't usually honored in a town like this don't mean that sometimes the opportunity for gold overrides any said or unsaid law. Clayton hasn't lived this long by leaving such things to chance.

(miriam sees because, as clayton comes to think, miriam sees everything but all she asks for is the simplest and truest answer he has to give)

\---

“My friend here thinks that a Reverend who drinks and visits whore houses is funny,” one of the men begins, “But me, I--I think I recognize you."

"Was you in the cavalry?"

The Reverend stills. 

"Sorry, friend. You must have me confused with someone else," he says and Arabella glances at him. 

The man shifts, settling a hand on his gun belt buckle and leaning forward slightly like he's trying to get a better look at the Reverend's face. 

"I don't know," the man drawls, "it's been a long time an' you had legs, but I think you was in the cavalry." His voice drops, "I think I know you." 

It's kind of funny, Arabella realizes as the Reverend slowly sets down his end of Farnum's body and draws himself up, but she'd actually forgotten how big he is.

"Friend, we're tending to some mighty immediate business," he says in a low, cold voice like she's never heard from him. "Now, my door is always open at the church. You can find me day or night. But I have to be going now."

The man glances over at his friend and they both start to smile, smug and cruel and Arabella sets her hand on her pistol. She can see the spines on the Reverend's fins have gone stiff and strangely sharp and the man says-

"We ain't going to no fucking church. I know you, I know what you did." And he moves forward a bit, broad silver tail gleaming in the light. 

The Reverend shifts, somehow, a hand going to his lower back below his jacket and somehow Arabella had never properly registered how sharp and inhuman his teeth were before he bared them in an empty, feral grin.

(long dark tail eyes unblinking free hand spread slightly with heavy hooked claws sharp teeth bared this is what the depths contain-)

"Now, boys. Unless you want to end up like Mister Farnum here I think you want to keep minding your own business," he says in that cold gravel voice.

The other man sneers, "Wonder what your business is besides this church bullshit? Seems strange that someone would come into town where no one wants a fucking church. Try and rebuild it when it’s already burned once."

He trades glances with his friend, "Something just ain't sitting well with us."

Arabella has her hand around the handle of her pistol and Aloysius is tense and watching and starting to set his end of the body down and she sees the Reverend glance at them. He seems to shake himself without actually moving and the intensity- dims, slightly, like lifting a finger from the trigger to hover instead.

"I don't think that's any of your concern. I'm just here to tend to the Lord's flock," the Reverend replies. His hand is still at his lower back below his jacket.

The other men finally notice Aloysius, who’d fully set down Farnum and sidled over nearly behind them, hand on his gun.

"Now, one of the many gifts of the Lord is the ability to count," the Reverend drawls, and nods to Aloysius, "and we got numbers."

The man takes his hand off his gun, glancing around them all, his friend eyeing Aloysius warily. Arabella smiles at them, hand on her own gun.

"For now," the man says ominously, and turns and promptly runs smack into the Sheriff.

"Oops," the Reverend deadpans, and Arabella snorts a laugh before she can stop herself. He glances at her and his smile relaxes into something more genuine. She sees the intensity bleed out of him, or maybe it simply submerges itself like most of the more dangerous things in the Lake.

\---

"Reverend," she says after their morbid little procession has ended with Farnum’s corpse on a table, "Are you alright? What on earth was that about?"

"I’m just fine. And I’ve no idea, so many drunks talkin’ nonsense in this town. Must’ve mistook me for someone else," he replies and Arabella raises an eyebrow at him.

"Must be quite the mistake to get you to nearly draw on them,” Arabella says, and sees Aloysius’s eyebrow go up even as the Reverend goes still again for the briefest of moments, before offering her an awkward smile that doesn’t show the tips of his teeth.

“Yes, quite,” he replies, and in a transparent subject change, “let’s get Farnum’s shirt off.”

“Ugh.”

\---

“Well that’s certainly something," Aloysius says as Clayton and Miriam enter the Doc’s office. Farnum’s stripped, a cloth coverin’ where his unmentionables would be were he not still in mer form.

There's a great big burn on Farnum’s chest in the shape of a snake. What in the _hell_. 

“Well,” Arabella says, with a deeply disconcerting smile, “Looks like we have ourselves a snake worshipper.”

“An’ we got a snake,” Clayton says flatly, dropping the rather squishy remnants of the snake Miss Joanie had killed on the table next to Farnum’s corpse. It sinks quickly, like it’s heavier than it appears. 

Or like the water don’t want to touch it. 

Clayton eyes it warily for a moment before becoming distracted by the myriad snake bites covering the exposed bits of Farnum. 

This is strange enough, and then Arabella grips the knife and slices.

And immediately flinches back as there's a burst of-

Clayton stares as does everyone else as goddamn _steam filled bubbles_ emerge from the incision Arabella’s made. 

“What in the _hell_ ” Arabella breathes, eyes wide.

The bubbles stop after a moment, only to repeat as Arabella pulls the skin and muscle back and then stop again once the interior of the abdomen is on full display.

There's air around Farnum's guts. It looks like a morbid soap bubble encasing everything under skin and muscle steam wisping about in the interior. 

"Why does he fuckin look like he's been cooked," Clayton asks warily, gun still aimed steadily at Farnum's head.

"There's ash, like in the graves," Arabella says and then visibly braces herself and sticks her goddamn hand in the guts. She actually rummages around for a moment, face screwed up in disgust before she pulls her hand back out, blood and ashy slime shedding from her glove as it reenters water. 

“Scales,” she says, and shakes her hand vigorously in an attempt to clean it. 

“Is his mouth all fucky too?” Clayton asks, and Arabella obligingly yanks Farnum’s jaw open and yes, yes it sure fuckin’ is. 

“I wonder if it’s some sort of snake god, I’ve heard of them in Mesopotamian culture, and I think Egypt as well. They’re quite common, really.”

“All right,” Aloysius says, “So if Farnum’s mixed up with some sort of snake god thing, what’s that have to do with the dead walking out of their graves?”

“Let’s find out,” Arabella says.

\---

This god creature quite likes the ephemera of saloons, Arabella thinks, staring at the saloon bar before her. There’s an impression of bottles behind it, real the same way the after images of lightning are.

There’s a figure standing behind the bar, and she can’t quite make out its face. It leans an elbow on the bar and she approaches, polishing a whiskey glass more real than the hands holding it.

“Hello, my dear,” it says.

-

If a body has no soul then it's simply what?

A meat puppet?

And every puppet needs a puppet master.

-

When she blinks back to reality her mouth tastes like whiskey.

“Puppets,” she says, and coughs, “the snakes make people- makes the corpses _puppets_.”

\---

They’re mid report to Swearengen when the screaming starts.

\---

Cynthia is standing on the street.

Her big sister is standing on the street in a pretty dress and half of her flesh is gone and Arabella wants to throw up.

She wants to curse the water for being so clear, so still despite the desperate fleeing and muffled screams even as the Reverend flings himself into the water, heedless of shredding fabric and Clayton follows after. 

She barely notices the upright corpse of Wild Bill firing into the crowd as she stares at her sister.

 _Please_ , she thinks prays casts, mind full of nothing but the light touch smell feel sense of home as a child, home with her sister, _please Cynthia, listen to me. It’s me Arabella. Please you have to be in there. You’re my sister. Please_

(green and amber sparks and silver and purple cynthia’d found the book first because for all that arabella was trouble hells bells she was just louder about it a book on wishes with rules and this made sense to children used to wishing on candles-)

Gunfire and gunfire and Arabella presses her forehead to her knees

(shrieking giggles and shushes and braids and twine-)

_Please, whatever evil holds you just stand down, let me talk to you. I still love you Cynthia please._

Gunfire and screams and Arabella scrambles upright and leans over the railing and yells-

_“Cynthia!”_

Her sister looks up at her, eyes not empty it’s so much worse just hate and her sister raises her gun and aims-

“Please, Cynthia.”

She’s crying she hasn’t cried yet it was never _real_ yet even when her sister’s grave was open before her this throat closing grief crashing over her as her sister raised a weapon against her teeth bared because the flesh of her cheek was _gone_ -

“Please.”

The gun sways. 

And swings up towards Aloysius and fires. 

A hand fists in the back of her dress and Miriam drags her backwards, making a noise not unlike an angry gator. 

“Do not,” Miriam hisses, “lean out in the middle of a goddamn gun fight!”

“It’s my sister,” Arabella rasped, “it’s Cynthia I have to-”

“ _That isn’t you sister,_ ” Miriam snaps, “did your sister stand in the Lake or swim? She’s like the others. I’m so sorry, but that’s not her.”

“I have to try,” Arabella snaps back and tugs free, ignoring the sound of tearing fabric as Miriam claws catch as she lunges forward to yell again to Cynthia.

“Please we can help you! Stand down!” 

And she aims at Wild Bill. As her finger tightens she catches Cynthia’s eyes and her shot goes wide. 

_I know my sister is still in there_ Arabella thinks prays casts-

Then her sister is aiming towards her. 

(empty eyes hatred is a yawning void)

And fires. 

The bullet cracks next to her head and flinches down below the railing and sees the Reverend emerge onto the street.

The Reverend raises his hands and-

Years ago, when Arabella had been curious about the world her sister was marrying into, she had stumbled across a mention of underwater explosions. She doesn’t actually recall what the book was, perhaps a pamphlet on the dangers of mining due to the then very new magnesium lamps. It was so easy, said neatly printed letters, to catch low lying vapor still within the mines.

Vibrant blue fire roars from the Reverend's hands, water screaming into steam and incongruous bubbles fleeing to the surface and the fire engulfs Wild Bill-

and then there's just ringing silence and ash.

And her sister, still there.

\---

_I'm sorry, I love you, I'm sorry, I love you, I'm sorry-_

Arabella aims and fires.

_I love you_

and her sister's corpse drops in the street.

\---

Matthew collapses against the wall and shakes, exhaustion a lead blanket and claws flexing as pain shivers through him, vision still glittering with blue sparks. He can still hear gunfire but he can't fucking get his gun back up and the fucking idiot is still going at the safe like there's not the risen dead running around.

 _Greed ain’t cheap, my own_

Matthew blinks down at scarred up knuckles as he flexes his hand into a trembling fist and thinks prays mumbles-

“Power never is.”

Pain shivers up his ribs like laughter.

 _Fair enough_.

There’s a single crack of a gunshot outside and the agonizing exhaustion washes away like it’s never been, the relief nearly as shocking.

“What,” Matthew breathes, and then shakes himself and gets up to deal with the idiot with the pickaxe.

(the hooplehead takes a look at the approaching preacher, sharp teeth bared and shotgun still handy, takes a look at the undented safe, and decides to bolt)

\---

The street is eerily quiet, after.

Arabella and Miriam were back in the water, Arabella’s fins clamped close to her body even as Miriam’s bristle, a surprisingly intimidating sight. 

Clayton keeps himself off to the side, a wary eye on Arabella’s sister’s corpse and on the folks he can see peeking out from where they've taken cover. He sees the Reverend swim out of the bank where he’d taken cover, moving slow and stiff. Aloysius follows the women at a distance, rifle slung over one shoulder.

\---

Arabella drifts down to her sister, staring.

She’s decomposed. It’s the emptiest, most clinical term she can ascribe to the shell of her sister. There’s no snake bites on her, by some small mercy. 

“Mister Sharpe,” she says, noticing that he’s drifted closer to her, “your knife, please.”

He hands his big Bowie knife over silently, and she starts to cut a lock of Cynthia’s hair-

 _“Weak fools”_

She freezes. The voice feels like slime, like dust in a dry throat.

 _“This game is coming to an end, but I still have some unfinished business. Come to where we first met. Or watch me_ burn _this place.”_

\---

The swim to the pit is an eerie one, setting sun casting rippling shadows through the surface, gold and red light catching on trees and sowing pitch dark shadows with diamond bright edges flickering over every surface.

Matthew falls back to where Arabella trails behind the group.

“Are you alright, my dear?” he asks softly, mindful of the others. She glances at him, reflexive smile more like a grimace. It’s harder to tell when someone is crying underwater, brave faces made sturdier by the water masking tears. The expression is the same though.

“I’m fine,” she says, “I’ll be fine. It’s- it’s just a bit more real, more final now.”

“I’m sorry,” Matthew offers, “I’d love to hear about her, sometime.”

She smiles at him, tremulous, “Yes, sometime.” 

He offers a hand and she takes it after a brief hesitation, and he sways sideways to bump his shoulder gently against hers. Her grip on his hand tightens briefly and then she bumps his shoulder back before she releases his hand. Arabella offers him a small, genuine smile and darts ahead. 

Matthew watches the setting sun flash off her scales as she joins Miriam, her own gleaming scales a riot of color in the dancing light. He looks skyward, watching the wind drag rippling waves in lines across the surface, like the air itself was trying to claw the water away.

The night is drawing in rapidly, and Matthew lurches ahead to catch up.

(the darkness trails behind him)

\---

_How these serpents burn. Poor would-be leviathans, not meant for the deeps._

Matthew has one bewildered moment wondering why God chooses now to talk to him, snake abominations mere feet from him and starting to lunge when he hears the monster Doc Cochran has become shriek-

“What is that? Who dares!”

“What-” he hears Miriam start, confusion audible even as she keeps her gun raised and steady. 

An interesting artefact of humans becoming merfolk is the tendency for those newer and even many veterans of the lake to still think in more or less two dimensions.

Meaning everyone still forgets to look _up_.

The surface had been dark before, far off clouds veiling the setting sun. It is darker now. And moving.

\---

What Clayton sees is the whatever the fuck snake monster the Doc became start yelling at nothing, and then he sees the Reverend tilt his head up towards the sky, expression gone strange and eyes gleaming golden red like they’ve caught lantern light again-

And then Clayton looks up. 

His yelp catches the attention of the Doc, but Clayton isn’t too concerned about that given the damned by whatever holiness Matthew worships massive goddamn _endless snake coils_ arching in the sky above them all. They are black as pitch, as tar, as the depths of the lake canyons where none dare enter-

 _Your kin is meant for the deserts, for the fire, for the dry air_ , the voice continues, and ice creeps up his spine as he realizes it sounds like the dream.

_Your kin, little snake, are meant for burning. You who would spread poison in my waters, in my earth, who would leave your corpse to rot once Mine have dealt with you?_

Ice creeps into Clayton’s skull but this time it’s bright and he feels awake aware and there is blue light blooming in his veins-

_I think not._

And then it is speaking. In his head.

_You have granted me your soul, and so I have granted you power._

His mouth tastes like iron and copper and his teeth are sharp and he can see the Reverend and his eyes are glowing-

_What will you do with it?_

Doc Cochran’s many heads are shrieking with rage and the smoke the fire the water is boiling around the monsters feet and the snake abominations are wailing and and-

(a shattered whisper i didn’t want my sister back like this-corpses in the street just folks gone about their days-dead men killing when their time is already done-when the dead rise in the lake it should only be to float-)

Clayton raises his gun, blue light wreathing it.

(a spread of cards and a needle tooth grin gone wider-)

And fires.

\---

After everything the brightness is still buzzing in his veins, pulsing blue flaring in his veins and along the sides of his tail in bright patterns even as he shakes from leftover adrenaline.

The clearing is silent save for the strange low hiss of the dying dark smoke. And the swearing, the very inventive swearing from multiple parties.

Miriam was currently winning, though Clayton, tail snapping from side to side like he could shake off the blue sparks still zipping around him, isn’t far behind. 

“Everyone alright?”

Everyone else appears to be ignoring the still slowly shifting coils above them, though Matthew can’t help but keep glancing up. There’s something soothing about the movement, the same reassuring slide of rosary beads through his hands.

Matthew’s shotgun is still warm for firing and heavy, slung over his shoulder. He can smell blood, and he realizes that Aloysius is bleeding from his side before Arabella is next to him in a flash of stripes, batting his hands away and she digs into her satchel for bandages.

The remnants of the snakes the Doc had exploded into (and Lord above but Matthew had somehow forgotten how terrifying nitroglycerin was) are still floating just above the lakebed. 

Visceral disgust rolls through him, and he sets himself to pushing the things over to the pit with the barrel of his shotgun, unwilling to touch them for all that he’s already covered in muck and guts from the fight. Swimming about is helping it rise off, at least. 

It’s only when he realizes he’s still trailing blood after having placed several of the corpses in the pit and Clayton abruptly barks “Reverend! Stop moving!” that the ache along the side of his tail registers. 

Oh that’s- that hurts rather a bit, actually.

\---

Arabella has to snap at Aloysius not to move himself when the Reverend goes sheet white upon noticing the great big gash in his tail. She’d only just gotten the fool man bandaged up and she didn’t need him undoing all her hard work when Clayton and Miriam had it handled.

They get the Reverend bandaged up as well, Miriam divvying out the definitely extremely flammable contents of her flask. There’s a long moment where they all just stare at each other in the lantern light and the still glittering luminescence Arabella had spelled into existence.

“Well that was a hell of a day,” Aloysius says and Matthew cracks up. Arabella finds herself giggling as well, and even Clayton huffs a laugh. If there’s an edge of hysteria to everyone’s laughter no one mentions it.

“All right all right,” Miriam says, struggling to tamp down her own laugh, “We-we should probably head back, Mister Swearengen will likely be waiting and he might as well know we’re out a town doctor.”

“Ah, yes, that would probably be a fair assumption,” Matthew says.

Arabella hums in reply, glancing up at the thankfully empty surface, moonlight gleaming brightly through the ripples. Must be a windy night, she notes absently, and then is distracted into helping Aly up. 

At least those coils in the sky are gone.

\---

(on the way back matthew trails behind, waving off assistance. everyone is tired enough not to question, so no one notices the way he presses a palm to the bandages, nor the stuttering flicker of blue light in his eyes. it looked worse than it was, he’ll say later)

\---

Clayton is watching with no small amount of amusement as Arabella investigates the strange sort of codd-neck bottles beer comes in in the Lake when Aloysius catches up to them at the table. He slides onto the bench next to Clayton and drops his elbows on the table.

“So,” Aloysius says, “Amos Kinsley.”

The world greys out. 

“Want to explain why Mister Swearengen handed me your poster?” Aloysius continues, like Clayton has not gone utterly rigid beside him and everyone at their little table’s attention is suddenly locked onto the pair of them.

“What,” Cllayton manages, because this isn’t-he always thought if someone saw there’d just be a bullet with his name on it not-not this strange, patient intensity as Aloysius stares at him. Aloysius’s got a hand near his gun but he hasn’t-hasn’t drawn it what-

“Amos Kinsley, wanted for the murder of-” Aloysius continues inexplorably.

“It wasn’t me,” Clayton says, a decade old denial clawing out of his throat. It’s not going to work, it never works, but he doesn’t want to kill Aloysius just to run _again_ -

“That so? Forgive me for sayin, ‘Mister Sharpe,’ but for a man of your profession it seems quite likely to be true.”

“Aloysius,” Miriam starts warily before Clayton’s strangled not-laugh cuts her off.

“It’s is one of life’s greater fuckin ironies that to survive bein’ hunted as a murderer may indeed make you one. In this instance the law was wrong and I did not kill Patrick Harvey’s brother. Innocent men get hanged while those who earned the noose go free all the damn time. It. weren't. me."

Aloysius just looks at him, eyes dark and sharper than any executioner's blade and Amo-Clayton waits for the bullet.

"Suppose it's just as well I've never met a man named Amos Kinsley," Aloysius finally says, "though I'm sure you'll be amicable to tellin' me who might’ve made such a mistake at a later time."

All the breath goes out of Clayton's lungs and he somehow manages a cordial "I'd be happy to."

“Jesus Christ, you two,” Miriam breathes and the Reverend mumbles “Lord’s name” in reflex. 

"What the _fuck_ ," Arabella hisses.

“An explanation would be appreciated, if it’s not too much trouble,” Miriam agrees. 

“It’s what I said, got framed for a murder and been running ever since. I’m not particularly comfortable discussin’ details in such an eavesdropper friendly environment,” Clayton replies, eyeing a hooplehead looking a mite too interested at a nearby table. Said hooplehead ducks his head and, upon the addition of Arabella’s glare, actually gets up and moves tables. 

“So you’re a lawman?” the Reverend asks cautiously. Clayton glances at him, heart still rabbiting, and thinks of the poster still tucked safely in his satchel, waiting for an opportunity to be burnt.

“Something like that,” Aloysius drawls, leaning back against the back of the bench in something a lot like a sprawl. His hand, Clayton notes, is still fairly near his gun. 

“Ah, um, alright,” the Reverend says, eyes wide and guileless. Clayton’s actually impressed.

“If I ain’t taking the one I was sent here for you don’t have anything to worry about, Reverend,” Aloysius says and both of the other men twitch.

“Well if no one’s shooting each other how about more drinks,” Miriam interrupts, and turns to holler for another round. 

The Reverend wheezes a hoarse giggle, and the tension finally unwinds. There’s another few rounds, and eventually Arabella declares that she ought to head out before it gets too dark to see and absconds with the only remaining lamp from their adventure. The men lose several rounds of poker to Miriam before Aloysius decides to head upstairs. 

Clayton eventually retires as well, and leans on Matthew shoulder for a moment.

“You did have a poster, in Farnum’s office,” he murmurs, ignoring how Matthew goes rigid under his hand, “I’m burning it once I’m upstairs. Good evening, Reverend Matthew, Miss Miriam.” The last he says at normal volume, tipping his hat before he heads upstairs.

The dawn will find them all in various stages of hangover the following morning, whatever dreams they may have forgotten, a new day waiting.

\---

( _have you ever noticed how the Lake takes to some folks better than others?_

_don’t you mean some people take better to the lake than others? because of course I have._

_no, no, meant what I said_

_what, like the lake has a mind of its own?_

_...nevermind, miriam, just-uh, just rambling, I’m afraid I’m out of practice with whiskey. I think I may actually retire for the evening_

_alright, good night, reverend_

_good night, miss miriam_ )

\---------------------------

END. 


End file.
